Russian news agencies said the satellites veered off course
and crashed near Hawaii after blasting off from Russia's Baikonur space center
in Kazakhstan.
The Khrunichev Space Center said the satellites had failed
to enter the right orbit after the launch went wrong 10 minutes after takeoff.
In a separate statement, space agency Roscosmos said that,
"according to the results of our telemetric analysis, it has been
determined that the group of satellites went off orbit."
Both agencies said specialists were trying to work out what
went wrong. The satellites were the last of a batch of 24 at the heart of
Russia's GLONASS, or Global Navigation System, its answer to the US Global
Positioning System (GPS).
The launch failure could delay what Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin has called "satellite navigation sovereignty," and
Russia's attempt to stimulate its economy by having domestic firms mass produce
GLONASS consumer devices.
The state has spent $2 billion in the last 10 years on the
project, being developed by oil-to-telecoms holding company Sistema.
The Russian government has also proposed a series of
protectionist, anti-GPS measures to encourage GLONASS' adoption.
Roscosmos said Sunday before the launch failure that GLONASS
would become operational in six weeks.
